In modern enterprise integration, managing data efficiently is as important as ensuring seamless connectivity between systems. SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI), also known as SAP Integration Suite, offers various options for data storage to support complex integration scenarios, enable stateful processing, and facilitate message handling.
This article provides an overview of the data storage options in SAP CPI, explaining their purpose, capabilities, and typical use cases to help integration architects and developers make informed decisions when designing integration flows.
SAP CPI primarily focuses on real-time and near-real-time data processing across heterogeneous landscapes. However, many integration scenarios require temporarily storing data to:
Understanding available data storage options within SAP CPI ensures that integration solutions are scalable, reliable, and performant.
SAP CPI offers several native mechanisms and external integration points for storing data during message processing:
The Process Direct adapter allows message exchange between integration flows within the same tenant, enabling in-memory data passing without persisting to disk. This is suitable for synchronous, low-latency scenarios but does not provide durable storage.
SAP CPI automatically stores message payloads and headers during processing for monitoring and troubleshooting. The Message Processing Log acts as temporary storage for messages, but this data is not intended for business use or long-term retention.
Integration flows can use variables to store transient data during runtime. These variables exist only during the flow execution and are useful for passing data between flow steps but do not provide persistence beyond the current message processing.
SAP CPI supports Data Store Operations (DSO) which allow developers to persist data in key-value pairs. DSOs enable storing and retrieving data during integration flow execution, useful for scenarios such as:
Data Store Operations provide a lightweight and flexible way to hold intermediate data but are scoped within the CPI tenant.
For more robust or long-term data storage, SAP CPI can integrate with external databases or cloud storage systems through adapters such as:
This approach is often used for complex scenarios requiring large volumes of data storage, audit trails, or integration with enterprise data lakes.
Though not a storage option per se, the Content Modifier step allows temporarily storing and manipulating message content and properties within the flow, useful for conditional processing and message enrichment.
When designing integration scenarios, selecting an appropriate storage option depends on factors such as:
| Use Case | Recommended Storage Option |
|---|---|
| Temporary data within one flow | Integration Flow Variables |
| Cross-flow data sharing | Data Store Operations |
| Short-term message persistence | Message Processing Log / Message Store |
| Large volumes or archival data | External Databases (JDBC Adapter) |
| File-based data exchange | SFTP Adapter |
| Real-time in-memory passing | Process Direct Adapter |
SAP CPI provides flexible data storage options to cater to various integration needs, from transient variable storage to persistent external databases. Understanding these options empowers integration developers to design scalable and maintainable integration flows that meet business and technical requirements.
By choosing the right storage mechanism, enterprises can enhance data reliability, enable complex orchestration scenarios, and improve overall integration performance within the SAP Cloud Platform Integration environment.